The present disclosure generally relates to bill of material (BOM) management systems, and in particular relates to an artificial intelligence BOM management system for processing multilevel bills of materials using an automatic adaptation method.
A conventional BOM consists of a list of parts or components that are required to construct a product or an assembly, and provides unique part identifiers and corresponding quantities needed for each component. Typically, the BOM is a multilevel document that provides product-related data for main assemblies and their associated sub-assemblies (i.e., components within components), and includes the part identifiers and an approved manufacturers list for each assembly and sub-assembly. Also included in the BOM are reference files, such as part specifications, Computer Aided Design (CAD) files, and other schematics.
During development and manufacturing processes of the product, its components are listed in a structured item list, namely the BOM. Generally, the BOM serves as a method of managing and tracking product parts changes or modifications, and maintaining a reliable, accurate list of requisite components. Further, the BOM may also be used as an index or organizational tool for the documentation of the product's components as component datasheets and mechanical drawings. Further included in the BOM are other reference items, such as tooling or agency certifications that are not included in the product itself, but are required for its manufacture.
Different domains and departments of a company, such as Engineering, Manufacturing, Customer Services, and the like, independently manage the BOM. In many cases, the BOM associated with each domain acts as a primary reference for product data when transferring product information from one domain to another domain. As the product evolves or changes in an Engineering or Manufacturing process by replacing the assembly or sub-assembly with improved components, the need for accuracy and integrity in the BOM becomes very important. Costly errors in the BOM typically include incompleteness, inconsistency, and incorrectness.
Multiple BOMs may be used, each BOM representing different functional company domain for an identical product. Each domain generates its own BOM that is distinct from the BOMs associated with the other domains. For example, an Engineering department may have their own BOM for the identical product, namely EBOM. Also, manufacturing and customer services departments may have their own BOMs, MBOM and SBOM respectively. These BOMs are typically stored in different, dissimilar databases in various locations of the company. During a lifecycle of the product, the BOMs, such as EBOM, MBOM, and SBOM, carrying essentially identical information about the components of the product are separately managed by each domain. When one or more components are updated or replaced with different components for the product in one domain, such changes are manually informed, adapted, and propagated to the other domains so that the accuracy and reliability of each BOM is maintained throughout the company.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,032,516 discloses methods and systems of presenting a user with a unified bill of materials from multiple bills of materials, respectively stored in different databases. The method disclosed in the '516 patent uses a taxonomy system and a semantic based ontology model to link product information from different BOMs, such as EBOM and MBOM. More specifically, a query is received from a user to inquire the taxonomy system using a keyword. The taxonomy system utilizes the semantic based ontology model to generate queries to be performed on related databases. The user receives query results from the databases in an organized format.
Such conventional methods do not provide a simple method of identifying and retrieving a correct BOM associated with the product for the domain because multiple standards exist among the various domains. Identifying the correct BOM is a challenging process when using the conventional methods because the domain-specific BOMs are often inconsistent and incompatible with the other domains due to different data types and configurations of each BOM, thereby making the retrieval process of the correct BOM very difficult and time-consuming.
Moreover, the method disclosed in the '516 patent is an “a posteriori” oriented approach in that the method deals with integrating product information from different BOMs only after the links between the components of the products in different BOMs have already been established. In other words, the '516 method does not improve the usual work processes between company domains. The users of each domain continues to use the same methods of work, especially in the manual adaptation and propagation processes of the product change information needed between the domains (e.g., between EBOM and MBOM).
Another disadvantage of the '516 method is that the users cannot determine “a priori” the impacts of assembly changes in a specific domain on a respective assembly in the other domains. Thus, a cost of performing the adaptation and propagation processes for the assembly changes becomes expensive and labor-intensive. Further, before performing such adaptation and propagation processes, the users must know exactly what product information is needed in searching for the correctly linked BOMs in different domains. As a result, generating the unified BOM from multiple domains can be very tedious and complicated process.
Therefore, there is a need for developing an improved BOM management system and method such that the BOM is maintained and transferred accurately and reliably between company domains without compromising the consistency and integrity of the BOM.